“Watch the Podcast”
“Listen to the Podcast”
“Show Notes”
On this week’s episode, the hosts dive into the world of email marketing and how it can be a powerful tool for photographers to generate leads and grow their business. The conversation goes beyond simple newsletters, revealing how smart strategies can automate your marketing efforts and significantly boost your bottom line.
Three Things You’ll Learn This Episode:
- How to Warm Up Leads Automatically: Discover the power of email automations and how to set up a series of emails that build a relationship with potential clients after they download a free resource from your website. You’ll learn how to use these sequences to move people from a cold contact to a warm lead ready to book with you.
- The Secret to Retaining Clients: Find out how an automated email sequence can keep you in touch with past clients. By continuing to provide value after a photoshoot, you can increase customer loyalty, encourage repeat business, and sell additional services they might not know you offer.
- The Power of Tags and Triggers: Learn the simple but effective system of using tags and triggers within your email platform to segment your audience. This helps you send the right message to the right person, so you never look unprofessional by sending a promotional email to someone who’s already bought from you.
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What to do with your mailing list
“Show Transcription”
00:00 –> 00:10
Welcome to Shoot to the Top, a podcast for professional photographers with web designer
00:10 –> 00:14
and marketer Sam Haworth and professional photographer with over 20 years in the industry,
00:15 –> 00:15
Marcus Ahmad.
00:22 –> 00:24
Hey, hi there, Sam. How are you doing?
00:25 –> 00:27
Excellent, Marcus. Very, very good. And you?
00:27 –> 00:30
Yeah, I am also very well, thank you. Yes, indeed.
00:30 –> 00:33
I think we’re going to start the show one time and go, no, I’m bloody awful.
00:34 –> 00:41
Well, I’m pretty, life’s pretty good at the moment. Maybe it’s just getting old and expecting less.
00:41 –> 00:48
I don’t know, but life’s pretty good. And to make it even better, you’ve got a really interesting subject.
00:48 –> 00:53
We’ve just been talking about the show you’ve not really touched on much. So what are you going to be talking about then?
00:54 –> 00:59
So, yeah, I’m going to talk about email marketing. And I was thinking, well, we do loads of shows on this because it comes up as a topic in a lot of shows.
00:59 –> 01:07
And then when I actually looked, we hadn’t done a show just about email marketing since May 22 or something.
01:07 –> 01:07
Oh, wow.
01:07 –> 01:16
23. So, yeah. So, yeah. So, for a lot of listeners. So, yeah, my first thing is for a lot of listeners probably didn’t even know we’d done those shows and probably haven’t heard them.
01:16 –> 01:25
So the first thing is go and listen to those first shows. Links in the show notes. There’s one show about building your mailing list and another show about email newsletters.
01:25 –> 01:29
And they’re definitely worth listening to. But I’m going to do something different for today’s show, Marcus.
01:30 –> 01:31
Go on then. What’s that?
01:31 –> 01:37
So, yes, we’re going to do email marketing to do beyond the newsletter.
01:37 –> 01:40
Oh, I didn’t know there was such a thing.
01:41 –> 01:45
There we go. So, yes, not just newsletters. What else can we do with them?
01:45 –> 01:46
Oh, great.
01:46 –> 01:51
So, yes. So obviously we can build our mailing list and we can send out newsletters and that’s lovely.
01:51 –> 01:56
But there’s other things we can do that are really powerful that maybe you didn’t know about or maybe you are doing.
01:56 –> 02:03
And I think it would just good to talk about them. And so one of the things I really want to talk about today is automations.
02:05 –> 02:08
OK. Well, like scheduling and stuff like that. Is that what you’re thinking?
02:08 –> 02:09
Yeah. So effectively.
02:09 –> 02:10
Or AI stuff.
02:10 –> 02:14
Yes. No, not AI stuff. So a newsletter, usually you write it, it goes out.
02:14 –> 02:19
You might schedule it to go out at a certain time and date rather than just when you wrote it, especially if you wrote it at 3 a.m.
02:20 –> 02:26
But an automation is more a series of emails that’s triggered by a certain event.
02:26 –> 02:33
So these can be really useful for all sorts of reasons, but largely to warm up leads.
02:33 –> 02:44
So if you can manage to get a lead to get a free down, we talk a lot, don’t we, about, you know, having lead magnets, having a free download on your website, having a free, getting a free meeting, whatever it is.
02:44 –> 02:48
But what you can then do, and normally that triggers an email, doesn’t it?
02:48 –> 02:53
If you get people fill in a form, get a free download, it triggers an automatic email that says, oh, well done, here’s your free download.
02:54 –> 02:55
And that’s an automation.
02:55 –> 03:01
But just leaving it at that one email is kind of a bit of a waste in some ways.
03:01 –> 03:11
What you can then do is send more and more and more and have a whole series of
automated emails going out that kind of is then warming up that person to become more of a lead for you.
03:12 –> 03:17
They’ve come in as a kind of cold lead and that’s going to warm them up as they get more and more emails from you.
03:18 –> 03:19
Oh, it sounds quite complex.
03:19 –> 03:21
I hope it’s not going to go over my head.
03:21 –> 03:22
It probably will do.
03:22 –> 03:23
It is not complex.
03:23 –> 03:25
It is just sending emails at different times.
03:26 –> 03:32
So you can get it to do all sorts of things and trigger in all sorts of ways.
03:32 –> 03:36
So the first thing for the automations is there has to be something called triggers.
03:36 –> 03:40
So effectively, that means why is this email going to be sent?
03:40 –> 03:40
Yeah.
03:40 –> 03:47
So it might be, let’s, for example, say you’ve got a free download on your website that is how to make the most of your brand photography.
03:48 –> 03:48
Yep.
03:48 –> 04:00
When somebody fills in that form, that could be the trigger to start an email automation that then sends them an email and then waits three days and then sends them another email and then waits a week and sends them another email and so on.
04:00 –> 04:05
So the first thing is the trigger is like what is causing these emails to go out?
04:05 –> 04:10
And often it is that filling in a form, but it could be if you’ve got an e-commerce shop, them buying something.
04:10 –> 04:12
It could be you manually putting on them.
04:12 –> 04:17
So it might be, for example, well, I’m going to set an automation up for everybody I meet at a networking event.
04:17 –> 04:25
And when I get home from networking event, I’m going to type all the names into my email marketing and I’m going to set that automation going.
04:25 –> 04:29
And they get like, you know, the first one is, oh, it’s really nice to meet you at networking and blah, blah, blah.
04:29 –> 04:33
You know, it could be, so you could do it manually like that, but usually it’s something automatic.
04:34 –> 04:35
You know, they’re filled in a form.
04:35 –> 04:37
They’ve sent an email.
04:37 –> 04:39
They’ve opened an email, whatever it is.
04:39 –> 04:42
There’s a whole list of reason, triggers that would start it off.
04:43 –> 04:51
I might be jumping the gun here a bit, Sam, but presumably you can do this within your platform that you’re using, or do you do it through LinkedIn?
04:52 –> 04:54
No, always through the email marketing platform.
04:54 –> 04:55
So you’ll have an email marketing platform.
04:55 –> 04:56
It might be MailChimp.
04:56 –> 04:59
It might be one of the other ones, MailerLite.
04:59 –> 05:03
And all of them have the ability to send automations.
05:03 –> 05:07
Now, some of them do restrict you depending on the subscription you have.
05:07 –> 05:15
I know certainly with MailChimp, you have to go a couple of subscriptions up to be able to do decent automations, which is a bit of a pain.
05:16 –> 05:19
While some of them just throw it all in for free, not for free, but within their standard package.
05:20 –> 05:20
You’re a feeling MailerLite.
05:20 –> 05:23
Once you’ve paid, you get as much as you like sort of thing.
05:23 –> 05:24
It varies.
05:25 –> 05:31
But, yeah, it’s always in that email marketing system because that makes sure, well, first of all, that they’re on your mailing list.
05:31 –> 05:33
Secondly, it deals with all that GDPR stuff.
05:33 –> 05:39
So every email will go with a little unsubscribe at the bottom so it deals with all of that thing for you, which is so, so important.
05:40 –> 05:44
Yeah, it’s the only way really to set these up is using that email marketing system.
05:45 –> 05:48
And the other thing you can have in there is decision points.
05:48 –> 05:52
So it might be that you’ve got, let’s say you’re promoting an event.
05:52 –> 05:53
You’ve got an event.
05:53 –> 05:57
You’re going to do, right, I’m, you know, I want to get, well, we were talking about brand photography, weren’t we?
05:57 –> 06:00
I’m going to do an event for small businesses in my area.
06:00 –> 06:04
I’m going to talk them how to, you know, improve their brand image on LinkedIn.
06:04 –> 06:06
I’m going to do like a little webinar maybe.
06:06 –> 06:08
So you get a little mailing list of people you’re going to invite.
06:08 –> 06:10
And then you put them all on this automation.
06:10 –> 06:12
And then they get the first letter inviting to the event.
06:12 –> 06:16
And, you know, well, maybe three days later they go, oh, you know, don’t forget this event.
06:16 –> 06:16
Have you booked on yet?
06:16 –> 06:17
Blah, blah, blah.
06:17 –> 06:23
Now, you’re going to look a Wally, obviously, if they book on and they keep getting these bloody emails reminding them to go to the event.
06:24 –> 06:34
So this is where these can be quite clever and you not just have a trigger at the beginning to start it, but you can have decisions, halfway decisions at different points as you go through.
06:34 –> 06:39
So it could be before you send the next email, it could be a decision, you know, has this person booked onto the event?
06:39 –> 06:40
Yes, no.
06:40 –> 06:45
If it’s no, you send them the next email reminding them to book onto the event.
06:45 –> 06:47
If it’s yes, then you’re cut off.
06:47 –> 06:49
You know, you don’t want them to get any more of those.
06:49 –> 06:50
So they stop being on the automation.
06:50 –> 06:57
But probably by booking on, you send them onto a different one, which is the emails you send out to people who are on the event because you’re saying different things to them.
06:57 –> 07:07
So you can use those decisions to make them quite clever so that, yeah, if you’re chasing somebody to do something, you can then make it so that at some point it stops sending them emails because they’ve done it.
07:08 –> 07:14
And now that might be automatic, like we said, they’ve booked onto an event and the marketing system can see that.
07:14 –> 07:19
It might be something manually where you just have to go into the mailing system and put a little note against their name going, yeah, they’ve done this now.
07:20 –> 07:27
I kind of use both because you can kind of, the automatic stuff, great, but kind of some things people do manually or it’s going to cost you a lot of money to link the system.
07:27 –> 07:31
So, you know, sometimes it’s easier just to, you know, go in and do it manually.
07:31 –> 07:34
You know, if it’s a few people, it’s easier than that than spending a lot of money.
07:34 –> 07:38
You know, if it’s thousands of people are making a lot of money, great, do all the automation.
07:39 –> 07:46
But if it’s, you know, if it’s a few people, just it doesn’t take a lot to log in, click on Fred blogs and add a little tag to him.
07:47 –> 07:49
So tags are really key actually to this.
07:49 –> 07:50
You know what tags are, Marcus?
07:50 –> 07:51
No, I don’t.
07:51 –> 07:52
I’m writing, I’m making notes.
07:53 –> 07:54
So go on, tell me what tags are.
07:54 –> 07:59
So, I mean, all tags are basically, if you’ve got somebody in your mailing list, it’s kind of a little note about them, for example.
07:59 –> 08:07
So it might be everybody you invite to this webinar, you put the tag webinar May 25, which means you invite webinar May 25.
08:08 –> 08:10
And then you just know you, there’s somebody you’ve invited to the webinar.
08:11 –> 08:11
Yeah.
08:11 –> 08:18
And so you might then have another tag when anybody’s booked on it automatically adds the tag, booked webinar May 25.
08:18 –> 08:23
And so when, before you send every email inviting me, just check they’re not booked already.
08:23 –> 08:24
You don’t have the booked tag.
08:24 –> 08:31
And it’s just a way of tracking what you’ve sent people, what you’ve invited to them, what you’ve invited them to, what they’re doing and stuff.
08:31 –> 08:32
Just kind of a way to keep it organized.
08:32 –> 08:35
And you can use tags to see where you’ve got people from as well.
08:35 –> 08:41
So, you know, you could, you know, people could all have, you could send everybody who’s come from the website, could have the tag website.
08:41 –> 08:42
You can do whatever you want.
08:42 –> 08:43
It’s just a way of labeling stuff.
08:43 –> 08:46
So then you can organize who emails go to and who automations go to.
08:47 –> 08:48
Great.
08:48 –> 08:48
Okay.
08:49 –> 08:50
Cool.
08:50 –> 08:55
So, so yeah, that’s, I’m just going through my notes now.
08:56 –> 08:58
So what could you use these automations for?
08:58 –> 08:59
There’s a few, few things.
08:59 –> 09:02
So I think warming up leads is really important.
09:02 –> 09:05
You know, if somebody’s gone to your website, they’ve got the free download.
09:05 –> 09:06
You still don’t know them.
09:06 –> 09:08
You still probably not spoken to them.
09:08 –> 09:12
They’ve been to your website once and they’ve got a download, but that’s not much of a relationship.
09:12 –> 09:17
But you can then, you know, start to build that relationship automatically, which sounds a little bit cold.
09:17 –> 09:22
But, you know, it saves you a lot of time because then later down the road, you can have a conversation with them.
09:22 –> 09:27
But in the meantime, you can be checking that they’ve read the download, asking what they think about it.
09:27 –> 09:32
Maybe sending a testimonial who’s somebody who’s done work with you on a similar thing.
09:33 –> 09:35
Talk about the sort of work you’ve been doing.
09:36 –> 09:37
Kind of just build that relationship.
09:37 –> 09:41
And eventually at the end of it, you can, you know, you can do a couple of things.
09:41 –> 09:45
You could try and get them then to book a call, for example, and go, right, you know, this has been lovely.
09:45 –> 09:46
I’d really like to speak to you about this.
09:47 –> 09:47
Book a call.
09:48 –> 09:50
Or you can also get the system to email you instead of them.
09:50 –> 09:55
So you could have had, say, 10 emails, email you and say, Marcus, this person’s had 10 emails.
09:56 –> 09:57
Call them tomorrow.
09:57 –> 09:58
So you get a notification.
09:59 –> 10:00
So, you know, ah, this person’s had all his email.
10:00 –> 10:01
I’m going to call them.
10:01 –> 10:05
And when you call them, it won’t be like somebody’s filled in a form once and they’re going, who the hell is Marcus?
10:06 –> 10:07
They’ve had all these emails.
10:07 –> 10:09
So they’ve got a good idea who you are.
10:09 –> 10:10
And they’re kind of pre-warmed up.
10:10 –> 10:14
So it’d be a much easier conversation while you’ve not had to do anything.
10:15 –> 10:19
I mean, I’m sure that’s key as well is automation.
10:19 –> 10:24
We all get quite a lot of automated emails and they are fairly easy to spot, aren’t they?
10:24 –> 10:28
I mean, you know, they get clever and clever with your name in the text, whatever.
10:28 –> 10:39
But yes, when it becomes to make the decision, if you can talk to somebody or have a more personal conversation, that might help tip over the edge.
10:40 –> 10:40
That’s it.
10:40 –> 10:45
I don’t think you’ll manage to make a big sale on email automation.
10:45 –> 10:48
The key is getting from one stage to the next, to the next.
10:48 –> 10:53
And we had a show we did a little while ago about marketing funnels, didn’t we, Marcus?
10:53 –> 10:54
We were talking about right first.
10:54 –> 10:56
We want somebody to, I don’t know, go to the free webinar.
10:57 –> 10:58
Then we might get them to this.
10:58 –> 11:00
Then we’ll maybe get them to make a small purchase.
11:00 –> 11:06
And it’s not about getting somebody who’s visited your website to go on a £10,000 course with you.
11:06 –> 11:10
It’s about somebody who’s coming to the website and nudging them towards that next step.
11:10 –> 11:12
And it’s, yeah, I think that’s definitely it.
11:12 –> 11:14
It’s like you want them to get to the next step.
11:14 –> 11:17
And these emails are just going to help to nudge them along that way.
11:18 –> 11:20
Yeah, you’re not going to sell huge amounts in one go.
11:20 –> 11:22
But it’s going to move you towards that sale.
11:22 –> 11:25
And it’s going to make that sale much easier.
11:25 –> 11:30
Because between the time they’ve done something and you speak to them, they’ve been given lots of information about you.
11:30 –> 11:32
And they’ve kind of felt they’ve got to know you a little bit.
11:32 –> 11:35
And maybe they’ve had a few emails backwards and forwards.
11:35 –> 11:38
So then when you have that conversation, they feel they know you.
11:38 –> 11:40
You’ve maybe had a couple of emails from them.
11:42 –> 11:44
Then it’s been really useful.
11:45 –> 11:52
So I guess what you’re saying there, it depends on, as most of these things are, on the application, how it’s going to be used.
11:53 –> 11:54
Exactly.
11:54 –> 11:57
Like, we’ve got something coming up, haven’t we?
11:57 –> 12:01
Where we’re going to be doing a live audience.
12:01 –> 12:02
We’re going to try something like that.
12:02 –> 12:06
And presumably, you’re thinking about doing that via email marketing.
12:07 –> 12:08
That’s it, yeah.
12:08 –> 12:09
Because we’re after numbers.
12:10 –> 12:14
Whereas I’ve got the workshop that I’m doing myself in Mexico next year.
12:15 –> 12:17
And I wasn’t really thinking about email marketing.
12:17 –> 12:19
Because I’m only thinking about, you know, 10 people on that course.
12:19 –> 12:23
So I would be thinking of something a bit more personalized and a bit more direct.
12:23 –> 12:25
Am I sort of right in doing that, Sam?
12:25 –> 12:26
Or do you think I should?
12:26 –> 12:27
It depends.
12:27 –> 12:27
It depends.
12:27 –> 12:32
If these are people who you’ve never talked to before, yes, you’re not going to get somebody you’ve never talked to.
12:32 –> 12:36
And this email automation can show them to go on an expensive course.
12:36 –> 12:45
But if you’ve never met them before, if you send them 10 emails in a row and then you speak them on a phone call, you’re going to have a much easier phone call than if it’s just a cold
phone call.
12:46 –> 12:47
It’s going to help along that process.
12:47 –> 12:48
You warm them up.
12:48 –> 12:49
Like you keep saying that.
12:49 –> 12:49
That’s it.
12:49 –> 12:50
Warm them up.
12:50 –> 12:50
Okay.
12:50 –> 12:51
Yeah, yeah.
12:51 –> 12:51
Great.
12:51 –> 12:51
That’s it.
12:51 –> 12:52
Okay.
12:52 –> 12:54
But you can use them for other things as well.
12:54 –> 12:56
So I use them for my customers, for example.
12:56 –> 12:58
So a lot of photographers, that would be really powerful.
12:58 –> 12:59
There’s a lot of photographers.
12:59 –> 13:00
You do your photo shoot.
13:00 –> 13:01
Off they go into the wide world.
13:01 –> 13:02
You never hear from them again.
13:03 –> 13:11
Now, if you had an automation that is for after people have had their photo shoot and you’re going five days later, you know, have you done your first LinkedIn post yet?
13:11 –> 13:12
How did that go?
13:12 –> 13:16
And you’re talking to them about them using their photos and helping them use their photos and stuff.
13:16 –> 13:20
How much more helpful are you going to appear and how much more likely are they to come back and talk to you?
13:21 –> 13:27
And you could maybe, you know, after they’ve had a few automations and they don’t have to, you know, they could, some of them could be a couple of weeks apart with something like that.
13:27 –> 13:29
They don’t have to be every five minutes.
13:29 –> 13:30
You don’t want to annoy people.
13:30 –> 13:34
You could maybe to start with have them a bit more regularly and then space them out and then maybe have a few close.
13:35 –> 13:40
And then, you know, after three months, well, do you want to just have a catch up and we’ll see how you’re doing with your photos and you’re staying in touch with people.
13:41 –> 13:42
And you could build that.
13:42 –> 13:44
And then every single client, bang, gets put on it.
13:45 –> 13:47
And the beauty of that is, Sam, as you say, it’s automated.
13:48 –> 13:49
So you don’t need to really think about it.
13:50 –> 13:52
But three months down the line, it’s going to happen anyway.
13:53 –> 13:53
I mean, yeah.
13:53 –> 13:54
That’s it.
13:54 –> 13:55
But it’s a good idea.
13:55 –> 13:56
I never thought of that.
13:56 –> 13:57
That’s a good idea.
13:57 –> 13:57
Yeah.
13:57 –> 13:59
No, with customers, it can work really well.
13:59 –> 14:00
So I think that’s the key.
14:00 –> 14:02
It’s about customers.
14:02 –> 14:03
It works really well.
14:03 –> 14:06
You talk about all your different services because they might not know what you’re offering.
14:06 –> 14:09
Often we’re talking with Gillian Devine on a show recently.
14:09 –> 14:11
She was talking about leaving money on the table because they, that’s right.
14:11 –> 14:13
Your clients don’t always know what you’re offering.
14:13 –> 14:18
This is one way of making sure maybe on that first go, you left a bit of money on the table.
14:18 –> 14:22
But with this, if they’re getting a series of emails afterwards, you’re letting them know what else you do.
14:22 –> 14:24
And they’ve already been your customers.
14:24 –> 14:26
So it’s not like you’re being pushy in some extent.
14:26 –> 14:26
You’re not saying buy this.
14:26 –> 14:27
You just say, oh, did you know?
14:28 –> 14:29
You know, we’re just offering this.
14:29 –> 14:30
Might be of interest.
14:32 –> 14:33
So yeah, really good for customers.
14:33 –> 14:37
really good on that sales funnel for moving people from one stage to the next.
14:37 –> 14:40
And like we said, Marcus, yes, we’re not expecting it to be a huge leap.
14:41 –> 14:45
Don’t expect 10 emails to turn somebody from you’ve never met to buying something massive.
14:45 –> 14:50
But it will move them from one stage to the next if you make those stages sensibly spaced.
14:51 –> 14:51
Yeah.
14:51 –> 14:55
Make them maybe coming having got a free download to maybe purchasing something small,
14:56 –> 15:00
maybe a one hour headshot session or something before you can then move them on to the next thing.
15:00 –> 15:00
Very good.
15:01 –> 15:01
Very good.
15:01 –> 15:02
Thanks, Sam.
15:03 –> 15:05
We’re coming up to a 15 minute mark.
15:05 –> 15:06
You got any more to add to that or?
15:07 –> 15:10
No, that was I’m about coming to the end of my notes there, Marcus.
15:10 –> 15:12
That’s about what I was getting for.
15:12 –> 15:14
I was waiting for your insightful questions, Marcus.
15:14 –> 15:15
That was all.
15:15 –> 15:15
Very good.
15:15 –> 15:19
And presumably you use these in your businesses, Sam, your website for photographers business.
15:20 –> 15:20
You use this kind of marketing.
15:20 –> 15:20
Yeah.
15:20 –> 15:23
So, yeah, I’ve got quite a big mailing list in there.
15:23 –> 15:26
There’s all sorts of tags and automations and all sorts going on.
15:27 –> 15:29
Yeah, I use it even more.
15:29 –> 15:32
I’ve got a website for tourism in Mozambique where I am.
15:32 –> 15:34
And, yeah, that’s got endless.
15:34 –> 15:38
So, I’ve got people in there who use the websites as tourists, who are business owners,
15:38 –> 15:41
who are business owners and they have listings on the websites.
15:41 –> 15:44
There’s all sorts of tags differentiating those different people.
15:44 –> 15:48
There’s automations chasing people for proof that they own a business so they can go and
15:48 –> 15:49
have a listing.
15:49 –> 15:49
There’s email.
15:49 –> 15:52
You know, there’s all sorts of endless email stuff going on there.
15:53 –> 15:53
Very cool.
15:54 –> 15:54
Thank you.
15:54 –> 15:55
Thank you, Sam.
15:56 –> 15:58
We hope you enjoyed this week’s podcast.
15:58 –> 16:01
You can like and subscribe on your usual podcast platform.
16:02 –> 16:09
You can find Sam and Marcus on LinkedIn and at websiteforphotographers.co.uk forward slash podcast.
16:10 –> 16:11
See you next week.
16:11 –> 16:20
Thank you.
